1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a record content searching/providing system and method for acquiring contents recorded and/or stored in a memory apparatus. Particularly, the present invention relates to a record content searching/providing system for searching a desired picture content among a large number of recorded picture contents recorded and stored in a memory apparatus.
2. Related Art
Development of digital technology enables to store a large amount of Audio-Visual (AV) data including picture and sound without deterioration. Recently, a hard disc drive (HDD) with several tens of GB, and a memory with a larger capacity becomes available in market with less cost. And a recording apparatus using such a hard disc drive have been introduced to market (for example, see “Recording devices for recording TV programs on the HDD are introduced” (Nikkei Electronics, No. 727, pp. 27-28, 1998) or “Digital recording technology using HDD is introduced for home-use” (Nikkei Electronics, No. 727, pp. 41-46, 1998)).
The HDD is an device that allows random access to recorded data. Accordingly, unlike conventional video tape player, it is not necessary to replay a recorded program sequentially from the beginning in a recoding/replaying apparatus with the HDD to replay record contents. The HDD recording/replaying apparatus allows to start direct replaying from any points of the recorded programs. On the other hand, it may be more difficult to operate such recording/relaying apparatus for a user if he/she tries to select a particular content from a large number of programs stored in the HDD as a memory capacity of the HDD increases.
In one conventional method for assisting user selection of contents recorded in a recording/replaying apparatus such as VTR, a list containing information regarding content titles and content recording date acquired from an Electric Programming Guide (EPG) may be displayed, and then a user operation for the selection is accepted. In another conventional method, thumbnails relating contents are displayed to assist understanding of the contents. However, in these conventional method, users have to go back to an original display screen for the selection when the users wish to re-select contents, resulting cumbersome content re-selecting operations. Further, the users have to learn operations in the selection screen, becoming burden to the users.
In another conventional method, the contents are categorized beforehand to make the selection of the record contents easier. In another conventional method, the contents are categorized layer by layer. However, deeper the layer becomes, more difficult to identify a category or layer to which the content is located. On the other hand, if the less number of layers are used, a number of contents belong to the same category becomes larger whereby resulting difficulty in searching among the single category.
In another conventional method, the contents are sorted. However, the method with sorting may provide merits unless users are familiar with attributes of contents such as title or recording date by which the sorting is executed. If a number of the contents were to increase further, burden of users becomes larger.
In a conventional computer system, an application program that can handle a data file of concern is selected and activated first. The data file can be selected within an application window. Or a data file of concern can be browsed by selecting the data file on a display screen to activate a corresponding application if data files and application programs that can activate the data files are pre-registered. In both cases, the data file of concern or the corresponding application program may be selected on a display screen of Graphical User Interface (GUI) by using a coordinate indicating device such as mouse or a cursor key.